Holding On
by Dana Katherine Scully
Summary: Post-The Truth. Mulder and Scully flee to England, bringing nothing but their baggage. Time to unpack.


Title: Holding On  
  
Author: Dana Katherine Scully  
  
Category: Post-XF Story  
  
Spoilers: "The Truth"  
  
Summary: What happens now?  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters or their story. I do my best to serve the original story and its integrity in my writing.  
  
They held on another long into the morning, their only concern the feel of another living, breathing person in their powerless embrace, holding them tenuously to the reality they both despised and could not resist. Maybe there was hope, maybe there was not. But without hope, what was left for those who sought to change? And so they held on desperately, trying to shape a hope that was at best ethereal and at worst, abysmal.  
  
The sun was high in the New Mexico sky when they left the tiny motel, carrying with them only two small travel bags packed with only the necessities. Neither spoke, too deep in thought and too afraid of the sudden schism they felt between them. They would go north, to Canada, then fly out of the US to London. Reinventing their identities would prove no great challenge: one could always find the right people if one knew where to look.  
  
Once in London, they planned to marry. The thought had always been the furthest from their minds in the days before the trial, but afterward the real Truth was becoming clear: the individual was powerless to do anything but shape his or her own life. Beyond that simple truth, there was simply nothing. If one was lucky one could negotiate this condition to please both one's community and one's self, but seldom could the delicate balance between justice and happiness be struck, and it required a diplomat, not a knight. So much had already been lost to them: so much of it sacrificed to know this simple Truth.  
  
More important than dates or beliefs or crusades, the Truth the couple now sought was their own sanctuary, a place within each other that they feared may be closed forever. The events leading to the trial, the loss of trust between those who had always trusted implicitly: these were the locks, the gatekeepers, guarding their happiness. The son they'd never know, the invasion they could not stop, the suffering they had failed to end: these were the harbingers of their doom, their emotional damnation. These were the voices of the dead, calling out from beyond the grave.  
  
The only glimmer of hope rested in the success of their escape, a fairly daunting test of wit and merit that seemed fittingly impossible in light of their dedication to justice. Fugitives with a conscience, lovers with logic: the very face of contradiction. These were the ones forced to flee, to test their own merit where others had so failed. Theirs was the most difficult journey, for they faced not only the retooling and reshaping of their identities, but the very destruction of the entire basis of their relationship. It could tear them apart.  
  
"Scully?" Mulder hesitated as he spoke her name, the words sticking in his dry mouth. "Are you alright?" A formality he could not resist: he was so afraid to lose her yet he could not bring himself to be candid.  
  
The jostling of the Ford Explorer was the only response he received. She kept her face glued to the window, as if the mesas outside had suddenly become the solution to the problem they knew they were powerless to solve. If she was crying he'd never know, because when she finally turned to him her ocean-deep eyes were clear and almost dull. "I'm fine Mulder," she whispered, as if she feared the timbre of her own voice. "I'm just fine."  
  
Mulder chose not to respond: anything he could say would only make things worse for them. The rift between them was stretching and yawning like a newly wakened tiger. The car seemed to strain to contain it.  
  
Where he went wrong he felt certain he knew: he had breached her trust by keeping the truth from her. In all of their years together she had been his confidante ("I need you to confide in me, Mulder"), and he had turned her away at the moment of reckoning: the ultimate test of his faith in her. He knew she could not see his reasons: he knew he could not explain them to her. He had his pride, no matter how low they got, and he could not stomach an admission of defeat ("You don't really believe that"). He would not tell her that he had kept her from the truth for a simple reason: he could not live without her. He literally could not survive without her. He knew: he'd tried. Desperation to see her had forced his hand, tipped the scales in Their favor. He could not let her know that, or he feared she would understand and tell him the same. He could not bear the thought of having become her crutch as well. With an absolute certainty he felt that anyone who depended on him was doomed for that reason, condemned to weakness by dependence on the ultimate weakling.  
  
"Why did you do it Mulder?" she said, whispering. Her tone was dangerously quiet, with the unraveling edge of a rag about to disintegrate. "Why did you bring me so far, then just drop me as a liability?" Her volume never changed, but the intensity of her words and the definition of her articulation betrayed her rising rankles. "Were you afraid of getting too close? Because I'd say the damage was already done on that front."  
  
"Scully...I don't...I don't know what to say," Mulder intoned quietly. "I am a guilty man."  
  
"Don't start that shit with me!" Scully suddenly exploded. "You are guilty of nothing except hope! Belief! Of clinging to change! Or are you guilty of something far more insidious, more sinister? Are you guilty of abandonment? Or are you guilty of producing a child you had no intent to love?" Scully bit her lip in agony over her lack of discretion. Mulder loved his son as much as she. She had crossed the line.  
  
The car swerved to the shoulder of the highway. Throwing his door open he shouted, "You want to play it that way? Fine! Why did you give him up Dana?" he mocked her, wrenching her door open and thrusting his face like a javelin into her space. "You gave away our son, just gave him up. Threw him out. Like garbage." The sharp pain of a fist connecting with his cheek stopped his tirade.  
  
"Don't you dare question me. Don't you dare imply I didn't suffer every minute of that decision. You will never, EVER know what it was like to give my son up. EVER, Mulder. EVER."  
  
A deathly silence thickened the air, with the once united couple broken and suffering. There would be no kissing and making up. The wounds inflicted by angry words heal only with time and patience, and only within their receiver.  
  
After an eternity, Mulder picked himself up off the ground and said tersely, "We'll be found if we stay."  
  
Those were the last words they spoke to each other until they arrived in London. They sat separately on the plane, refusing to make eye contact. They kept their finances separate and had purchased their own tickets separately, even waiting at the terminal the furthest away from the other that they could. When they arrived in London they sailed through customs without a hitch, new passports gleaming with the promise of a new life, hidden but safer than the last.  
  
Scully was the only one of them who'd ever driven on the right side of the car, so as a matter of necessity she drove them out into the countryside. They had no planned accommodations, only the vague and unsettling sense of being entirely alone in this new country. After several hours of travel they located a Bed and Breakfast, renting two separate rooms on two different floors. The idea of marriage abandoned for the moment, the separated couple hardly left their rooms. The time they spent inside their walls was their own affair, with many hours filled with retching sobs and whimpered apologies. Neither ate for a week, their only sustenance the water that would appear in their rooms after the maids came through every two days or so.  
  
After a week of this, the owner of the bed and breakfast (Cherrie's Country Place) decided to check in on the thin red-head in room 2. She let herself in when she knew the woman would be sleeping, but the sight she was met with astonished her. "Oh dear God!" she exclaimed, the sight of Dana Scully's emaciated form her first indication that something was gravely wrong. "Ms. Williams please wake up...Lord Almighty she's unconscious!"  
  
Running from the room, the woman telephoned the local emergency service, then ran upstairs to contact the woman's husband. "Mr. Luder!" she cried at the top of her voice, her rotund figure complaining at every step. Huffing and puffing she reached the top of the stairs: "Mr. Luder! You're wife is very ill!"  
  
The door to room 4 slowly swung open, revealing a gaunt and haunted man. "She's ill?" he asked quietly.  
  
"Gravely, sir, gravely. You'd better come and sit with her: she's not conscious but it might help her come to."  
  
"Um, we're not....we're not speaking."  
  
Cherrie looked indignant. "Mr. Luder I suggest you start speaking." With that the older woman swept from the front foyer, leaving Mulder alone to ponder his options. His pride screamed to stay where he was and let her damn herself, but all the rest of him had strained to reach out to her since their unspeakable words. "I'm coming, Dana," he whispered.  
  
The country hospital had never seen this depth of agony in one human being. Diana Williams (as they knew her) had worked herself nearly into a vegitative state. There was no way that they knew to treat her, except to insert a feeding tube and pump desperately needed nutrients into her body. Beyond that, the doctor on call that night feared that there was no counselor, psychiatrist, or doctor in the world that could treat this woman's condition. Her husband didn't look like a good bet either. Apparently, they had had some sort of falling out, which was the cause of her condition. William Luder was just as emaciated as his wife, but his eyes held a darker secret: not just the pain of his own suffering, but the burden of responsibility for the pain of his wife.  
  
Mulder stayed quietly by his lover's bedside, his head heavy. He was not prepared to forgive her for her words, but he knew he had equally wounded her. Losing Scully would be unbearable to him, especially in a strange country and fleeing for their lives. Losing William had been bad enough, losing his mother would certainly permanently cripple him. As it was, every little boy he saw became the accusing visage of his lost son. He knew with unflagging certainty that he would never have another child, never hold his own infant again. How she could have born the parting with their son he would never know.  
  
"Mulder?"  
  
He raised his heavy head with a concerted effort, staring into her eyes. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."  
  
Her eyelids fluttered shut again, the effort of simply speaking his name nearly unbearable. "I won't do this to you again," Mulder whispered to himself.  
  
Her hand moved slightly, but Mulder understood even from the vagueness of the gesture. She wanted him to take her hand. For some unknown reason, Mulder could not yet permit himself to do it. Instead he whispered, "I'm here." Unsatisfied, her hand wavered again, all the insistence she could muster. Tears filled his eyes as he said, "I can't." The hand went limp. 


End file.
